AFP Consortium publishes new version of the Presentation Text Object Content Architecture (PTOCA) Reference
BOULDER, Colo., February 28, 2025 – The Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) Consortium, an international consortium of print and presentation industry stakeholders working together to further enhance the AFP document architecture, is pleased to announce the availability of the fifth edition of the Presentation Text Object Content Architecture (PTOCA) Reference, document number AFPC-0009-04. The new reference includes support for encrypted text.
The leading text architecture for high-performance transaction printing, PTOCA provides a consistent way to present text in an AFP environment. The PTOCA architecture allows text in an AFP document to be fully described in device- and process-independent terms.
New in the fifth edition of the reference is support for encrypted text data for secure printing and presentation. This adds new security capabilities to PTOCA for printing sensitive information, such as Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) and Transaction Authentication Numbers (TANs). With these new capabilities, PTOCA can now identify encrypted bytes that represent protected information. It also provides a means to set the key information for these encrypted bytes to facilitate decryption into code points in a character string at presentation time. If the decryption should fail, a mechanism is provided in PTOCA to substitute alternate text in the place where the decrypted code points were intended to go.
For details, please refer to the new reference on the AFP Consortium website:
https://www.afpconsortium.org/publications.html
About AFP and the AFP Consortium
Advanced Function Presentation is a document architecture that offers performance, manageability, and integrity benefits meeting the needs of large volume, variable data applications. AFP technology has historically been used to produce mission critical documents such as bills, statements, and policies and contains methods for job ticketing, effective server-based resource management, and the powerful Intelligent Printer Data Stream (IPDS) for total output integrity. In addition to being a rich, self-contained native document language, AFP is also a powerful container architecture capable of bringing full resource and production management capabilities to bear on encapsulated formats such as PDF and TIFF.
The AFP Consortium is an international open standards body consisting of over 30 companies committed to the continued development of the AFP architecture. Since 2004, the AFP Consortium has developed open standards for accurate and consistent ICC-based color management, high-speed complex text, page group recovery within high-volume production, the IS/3 interchange set for compliance, and metadata support for AFP Archive and applications such as accessibility features, as well as many other functionalities. The AFP Consortium will continue in its role to grow and maintain the complete set of AFP architecture.
For more information, visit the AFP Consortium website: https://www.afpconsortium.org.
The leading text architecture for high-performance transaction printing, PTOCA provides a consistent way to present text in an AFP environment. The PTOCA architecture allows text in an AFP document to be fully described in device- and process-independent terms.
New in the fifth edition of the reference is support for encrypted text data for secure printing and presentation. This adds new security capabilities to PTOCA for printing sensitive information, such as Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) and Transaction Authentication Numbers (TANs). With these new capabilities, PTOCA can now identify encrypted bytes that represent protected information. It also provides a means to set the key information for these encrypted bytes to facilitate decryption into code points in a character string at presentation time. If the decryption should fail, a mechanism is provided in PTOCA to substitute alternate text in the place where the decrypted code points were intended to go.
For details, please refer to the new reference on the AFP Consortium website:
https://www.afpconsortium.org/publications.html
About AFP and the AFP Consortium
Advanced Function Presentation is a document architecture that offers performance, manageability, and integrity benefits meeting the needs of large volume, variable data applications. AFP technology has historically been used to produce mission critical documents such as bills, statements, and policies and contains methods for job ticketing, effective server-based resource management, and the powerful Intelligent Printer Data Stream (IPDS) for total output integrity. In addition to being a rich, self-contained native document language, AFP is also a powerful container architecture capable of bringing full resource and production management capabilities to bear on encapsulated formats such as PDF and TIFF.
The AFP Consortium is an international open standards body consisting of over 30 companies committed to the continued development of the AFP architecture. Since 2004, the AFP Consortium has developed open standards for accurate and consistent ICC-based color management, high-speed complex text, page group recovery within high-volume production, the IS/3 interchange set for compliance, and metadata support for AFP Archive and applications such as accessibility features, as well as many other functionalities. The AFP Consortium will continue in its role to grow and maintain the complete set of AFP architecture.
For more information, visit the AFP Consortium website: https://www.afpconsortium.org.
